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This book focuses on the analysis of data from single case designs. The methods covered in this book range from traditional visual analysis methods to complex ARIMA statistical models. The use of graphical methods is also extensively covered. The book is most appropriate for students in doctoral programs in disciplines such as Social Work and Psychology. It should also be useful for researchers and professionals in the various helping professions that make use of single case design methodology for practice evaluation and research. The methods covered range from the very simple to the very complex.

Americans support science as well as religion—but these two things are often at odds. In the wake of recent controversies about teaching intelligent design and the ethics of embryonic-stem- cell research, greater understanding between scientists and the general religious public is critical. What is needed is a balanced assessment of the middle ground that can exist between science and religion. Science vs. Religion: What Do Scientists Really Think? is the definitive statement on this timely, politically charged subject. After thousands of hours spent talking to the nation’s leading scientists, Elaine Howard Ecklund argues that the American public has widespread misconceptions about scientists’ views of religion. Few scientists are committed secularists. Only a small minority actively reject and work against religion. And many are themselves religious. The majority are whom she calls spiritual pioneers, who desire to link their spirituality with a greater mission for the work they do as scientists. In the current climate, even scientists who are not religious recognize that they must engage with religion as they are pressed by their students to respond to faith in the classroom—what Ecklund calls environmental push. Based on a survey and interviews with scientists at more than 20 elite U.S. universities, Ecklund’s book argues that other scientists must step up to the table of dialogue and that American believers must embrace science again. Both science and religion are at stake if any less is done.

This book is intended to be read at any stage in the dissertation process, but will be particularly useful in the early stages of preparation for a social work dissertation, and as a reference resource throughout. The book is a guide to successful dissertation completion. Content includes a brief history and overview of social work doctoral education in the United States, the importance of values in social work, and the relationship between personal, research, and social work values. Chapter 2 addresses issues in selecting and working with the dissertation supervisor and committee, as well as the role and tasks of all three parties in successful completion of the dissertation. In Chapter 3 strategies for researching, and evaluating the literature, as well as writing the literature review are discussed. In addition, the relevance of theory to social work research is examined. Chapter 4 describes ethical issues in social research and requirements for the protection of human subjects. In addition, an overview of both quantitative and qualitative research methods is provided. In Chapter 5 sample design and sample size are discussed in relation to both quantitative and qualitative research. The significance of the psychometric properties of measurement instruments is also discussed. Chapter 6 addresses issues in data collection, data management, and data analysis in qualitative and quantitative research. Finally Chapter 7 presents strategies for dissertation writing including structure and content, as well as data presentation.

A demanding challenge in cross-cultural design is how to make a usable technology meaningful to local users. This book examines the disconnect of action and meaning in cross-cultural design and presents an innovative framework “Culturally Localized User Experience (CLUE)” to tackle the problem. Drawing from three strands of practice theories—activity theory, British cultural studies, and rhetorical genre theory, the CLUE approach regards local culture as the dynamic nexus of contextual interactions and integrates action and meaning through a dialogical, cyclical design process in order to design a technology that would engage local users within meaningful social practices. With five in-depth case studies of mobile text messaging use in American and Chinese contexts, this book demonstrates that a technology creating for a culturally localized user experience mediates both instrumental practices and social meanings. It calls for a change in cross-cultural design practices from simply applying cultural conventions in design to localizing for social affordances with rich understandings of use activities in context. Meanwhile, the vivid user stories at sites of technology-in-use show the power of “user localization” in connecting design and use, which the book believes essential for the success of an emerging technology like mobile messaging in an era of participatory culture. This book is divided into three parts: theoretical grounding for key concepts, case histories, and scholarly implications. It explores how to create culture-sensitive technology for local users in this increasingly globalized world with a rising participatory culture.

For epidemiologists and public health professionals, the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS has provoked a fundamental re-examination of infectious disease prevention and the research needed to support it. This book documents and explains a breakthrough in behavioural research design that has emerged to confront this new challenge: the network survey. It represents a paradigm shift in epidemiology, broadening the focus from the traditional “knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP)” of individuals to mapping the relational networks that spread infection, and constrain behavioural change. Eight pioneering network studies from around the world are reviewed, with extensive detail on the sampling strategy, questionnaire development, fieldwork experiences, and key findings. In addition, there is an introduction that lays out the basics of network survey design, and a glossary of network terminology. This is a unique resource for all who wish to understand or undertake a network study.

This book addresses some of the special challenges that arise when two or more national communities share the same (multinational) state. As a work in normative political philosophy, its principal aim is to evaluate the political and institutional choices of citizens and governments in states with rival nationalist discourses and nation-building projects. The first chapter takes stock of a decade of intense philosophical and sociological debates about the nature of nations and nationalism. The remainder of the book focuses on the three major political and institutional choices in multinational states. First, what can political actors and governments legitimately do to shape citizens’ national identity or identities? This is the core question in the ethics of nation-building. Second, how can minority and majority national communities each be given an adequate degree of self-determination, including equal rights to carry out nation-building projects, within a democratic federal state? Finally, even in a world where most national minorities cannot have their own state, how should the constitutions of multinational federations regulate secessionist politics within the rule of law and the ideals of democracy?

What, exactly, was the Charity Organization Society? Was it a cluster of affluent women imposing their moral propriety on the poor in the early 20th century? Or was it the first concerted effort to professionalize previously random, subjective allocations of benefits and entitlements? This book is a guide to the systematic exploration of such questions and debates in social work and social welfare history. Mastering how to pose historical questions is as essential as finding the answers. This book offers practical research tools: how to design a study, select primary sources, understand the vocabulary of archives, determine useful secondary sources, and analyze them all. The book also features a directory of archives and special collections that details their holdings, access and locations, and research grants.

This book brings to the fore recent advances in econometrics for treatment effect analysis. It aims to put together various economic treatment effect models in a coherent fashion, determine those that can be parameters of interest, and show how these can be identified and estimated under weak assumptions. The emphasis throughout the book is on semi- and non-parametric estimation methods, but traditional parametric approaches are also discussed. This book is ideally suited to researchers and graduate students with a basic knowledge of econometrics.

Sheds some light on how markets develop. In particular, it suggests that the ‘new economy’ is not much different from the ‘old economy’ and that in general, the early evolution of markets can significantly shape their later structure. The main arguments are elaborated in four chapters, each of them extensively illustrated with product‐case studies (internet, automobiles, television, or mobile phones, etc.). Ch. 2 explores the drivers of innovation and concludes that new technologies are basically pushed on to the market from the supply side. Ch. 3 looks at the dynamics of entry in a new market. Ch. 4 deals with the emergence of a dominant design as a consensus good. Ch. 5 shows how the dominant design shapes the nature of the competition in the new mass market and describes the logistical growth pattern characteristic of most new markets. The last chapter is devoted to sketch out the basic features of market evolution that follow from the events in the early stages of development.

Climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the threat of a global pandemic have the potential to impact each of our lives. Preventing these threats poses a serious global challenge, but ignoring them could have disastrous consequences. How do we engineer institutions to change incentives so that these global public goods are provided? This book provides an introduction to the issues surrounding the provision of global public goods. Using a variety of examples to illustrate past successes and failures, the book shows how international cooperation, institutional design, and the clever use of incentives can work together to ensure the effective delivery of global public goods.

At a time in which probability theory is exerting an unprecedented influence on epistemology and philosophy of science, promising to deliver an exact and unified foundation for the philosophy of rational inference and decision-making, it is worth remembering that the philosophy of religion has long proven to be an extremely fertile ground for the application of probabilistic thinking to traditional epistemological debates. This book offers a representative sample of the work currently being carried out in this potentially rich field of inquiry. Grouped into five sections, the chapters span a broad range of traditional issues in religious epistemology. The first three sections discuss the evidential impact of various considerations that have been thought to have a bearing on the question of the existence of God. These include witness reports of the occurrence of miraculous events, the existence of complex biological adaptations, the apparent ‘fine-tuning’ for life of various physical constants and the existence of seemingly unnecessary evil. The fourth section addresses a number of issues raised by Pascal’s famous pragmatic argument for theistic belief. A final section offers probabilistic perspectives on the rationality of faith and the epistemic significance of religious disagreement.

This book questions why organizations often do not function effectively, focusing on leadership, cultural change, and organizational design. It considers how organizations often espouse a particular objective and yet frequently employ means of implementation that contradict that objective. The book illustrates how dysfunctional behaviour abounds in organizations and conflict is frequently avoided rather than dealt with openly, with the same arguments erupting repeatedly. It argues that people who feel like victims at work are not trapped by some oppressive regime, but they are trapped by their own behaviour; they themselves are responsible for making the status quo so resistant to change. The book reflects on the controversies that previous researchers have encountered on the subject: on the one hand, there is substantial agreement that these traps are counterproductive to effective performance, but on the other hand, there is almost no focus on how organizational traps can be reduced. The book ultimately concludes that whatever theory is used to understand such situations, should be used to implement interventions that prevent them.

At its heart this book is about innovation and the innovation process. On the way, it considers culture and the cultural industries, aesthetics, creativity and the creative industries, and a number of other similar areas of study, but the common point of interest is innovation. One main purpose of the book is to argue that there is a type of innovation, here labelled soft innovation, primarily concerned with changes in products (and perhaps processes) of an aesthetic or intellectual nature, that has largely been ignored in the study of innovation prevalent in economics. Examples of innovations that, as a result of this refocusing, are here placed at the centre of the analysis, include the writing and publishing of a new book; the writing, production, and launching of a new movie/film; the development and launch of a new advertising promotion; the design and production of a new range of furniture; and architectural activity in the generation of new-built form designs. The realisation of the existence of soft innovation means that not only is innovation more widespread than previously thought, but may also take a different form than commonly considered. The book has three parts. Part 1 is concerned with attempts to define and measure the extent and nature of soft innovation, with Chapter 1 introducing and overviewing the whole. Part 2 of the book is directed towards the economic analysis of soft innovation. Part 3 of the book is concerned with impacts and implications.